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Robert Martin
The Hampton University Concert Choir is singing the praises of one of that school’s distinguished alums.
The university choir and the Atlanta chapter of the National Hampton Alumni Association are partnering to present a tribute to Roland Carter on Monday night during the choir’s concert in Friendship Baptist Church in northwest Atlanta.
It is the first such tribute by the choir in collaboration with an alumni chapter, said Royzell Dillard, Hampton’s director of university choirs. It also is a first for Atlanta’s Hampton alumni, according to Calvin Ruffin and Robert Martin, co-chairmen of the event. The concert is open to the public.
Mr. Carter is the Holmberg Professor of Music at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the director of the Chattanooga Choral Society for the Preservation of African-American Song.
Before joining the faculty at UTC, Mr. Carter was director of choirs at Hampton, his alma mater, for 24 years.
The choir’s performance in Atlanta is one stop on its annual spring concert tour, according to Mr. Martin. He said the alumni chapter timed the performance to coincide with the chapter’s recruiting seminar for any high school student in Georgia interested in admission to the Virginia college.
Mr. Dillard, a former student of the honoree, said the concert will open with Mr. Carter’s well-known arrangement of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
“It’s one of the things we learned as students under Mr. Carter, and it’s become a statement piece for the Hampton choir. We open every concert with it, and it has become identified with Hampton’s choir,” Mr. Dillard said in a phone interview this week.
Mr. Carter is president of the National Association of Negro Musicians Inc. and serves on the board of the National Association for the Study and Performance of African-American Music.
His arrangements are performed by choirs and orchestras across the country. He directed the Atlanta Symphony in a performance of his composition “Hold Fast to the Dream.” The Hampton choir sang his arrangement of “Hold Fast to the Dream” at the second inauguration of Bill Clinton in Washington, D.C.
Even NASA has used one of his arrangements (“Lift Every Voice and Sing”) as a wake-up call for astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Discovery during July 2006.
Vic Oakes, director of the Chattanooga Boys Choir, has conducted several of Mr. Carter’s scores both with the CBC and in joint performances by the boys with the Chattanooga Choral Society for the Preservation of African-American Song.
“His arrangements are always accessible and exciting while keeping the essence of the original work,” said Mr. Oakes. “Roland is one of Chattanooga’s brightest treasures. His national and international reputation is a compliment to the city,” said the director.
Dr. Lee Harris, head of the UTC Music Department, termed Monday’s recognition a “measure of (Mr. Carter’s) professional reputation beyond the borders of any particular college or university.”
The Hampton choir director said Mr. Carter “took the time to really teach and nurture me as a performer.
“His influence comes with the literature he taught us as choir members, and now I get to interpret that literature as director of the choir he was once over. I try to keep his spirit of professionalism,” Mr. Dillard said.
That statement brings full circle the influence of a Hampton teacher over a student.
Mr. Carter said during a recent interview with the Times Free Press that he attended Hampton due to the encouragement of his high school music teacher, the late Edmonia Simmons.
“She literally put me in her 1959 Mercury and drove me to her alma mater (then Hampton Institute), deposited me on that campus and said I was going to study music where she studied,” Mr. Carter said.
While the director of Hampton’s choir, Mr. Carter led the singers in their debut at Lincoln Center and directed an engagement at Carnegie Hall in 1972.
Proceeds from ticket sales to Monday night’s concert will fund projects of the Atlanta Hampton Alumni Association as well as the Hampton University Choir’s scholarship fund.
Hampton University recruiting seminar
Robert Martin said any North Georgia high school student interested in admission to Hampton University in Hampton, Va., is invited to attend Monday’s Student Recruitment session and concert in Atlanta. The college fair begins at 5:30 p.m. in Friendship Baptist Church, 437 Mitchell St.
Admissions counselors will be attending to answer questions for students and parents. Information will be available about an upcoming student bus trip to tour the campus, Mr. Martin said.
Additionally, the recruiting session will offer on-site acceptance to the university for high school seniors who have completed all admission forms and bring those required papers to the event.
For more information, log onto www.hualumni.com.
Susan Palmer Pierce is a reporter and columnist in the Life department. She began her journalism career as a summer employee 1972 for the News Free Press, typing bridal announcements and photo captions. She became a full-time employee in 1980, working her way up to feature writer, then special sections editor, then Lifestyle editor in 1995 until the merge of the NFP and Times in 1999. She was honored with the 2007 Chattanooga Woman of ...
